Below is a 1 take video I did, without my first cup of coffee, with my co-presenter Sage Lewis to help you get a taste of all you will learn. Check this link to get all the details for the class:
http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/chicago/training.html

Think Global, Act Local Training Class: Search Engine Strategies (SES) Chicago – December 3-7, 2007

First off you need to determine your level of expertise. From what I had gathered this ranged from people who ran their own successful web marketing firms who “barely passed” to people who had handled a handful of Adwords accounts that “studied like it was an actual exam” and didn’t seem to think it was that big of a deal at all.

Translation: Not fucking helpful.
My Thoughts: Putting in days worth of studying for the unknown doesn’t sound like fun and though I’ve run my fair share of accounts I most certainly don’t run my own marketing firm.
Where That Leaves Me: Headed up the river with a boat and no paddle.

This leaves me with no other choice but to start studying. I decide, on the fact that I hate failing more than I hate studying that it would be in my best interest to study and study hard. In the end it can only do me good right? What’s going to happen… I’m going to come away with too much knowledge? So after several failed attempts to be able to alot my time in such a fashion to allow me to study at work or afterwards I find that I have no other option than to lock myself in my room for a day and hit the books, so to speak. And by hitting the books, I mean going through every piece of training in the Google AdWords Learning Center, taking notes and building myself a cheat sheet to die for..

Saturday comes and that’s exactly what I do. By 8am, fresh coffee in hand, I start my routine. By 10:30 or 11, I’m tired. Having figured I’d just run the whole gamut and then take the quizzes followed by the exam, I decide to scroll down through the list ’cause surely I’m almost done. As it turns out, I’ve completed 9 whole lessons… out of 110!

Say what?!! 110 of these things? 3 hours complete and I’m only 9 lessons in? Officer Barbrady, I call shenanigans!

Translation: Bullshit.
My Thoughts: At this rate I will never finish the lessons, much less the quizzes, nor the test in one day. Complete Bullshit.
Where That Leaves Me: Running around the house cursing everything that could possibly be cursed in the name of Google and trying to figure out an alternative to this regiment from hell.

Plan B
OK. Before I begin Plan B, let me just say that the learning center at AdWords is very very good. They cover just about everything you would need to get a PHD in being a PPC whore. However, the day I need to know the standard EU VAT tax for countries billing in Ireland that don’t report their tax rates and infact reside in a different country, in order to pass an exam, is the day that Google can lick my ass and I’m $50 richer by default. Now where was I? Oh yes…

Plan B
This consisted of my strategy by which I decided that in lieu of studying all 110 sections, I would just take the quizzes at the end of each section. Then, if I tank a section or think that I just don’t know enough to pass a test on it, I can go and study that section.

As it turns out.. taking 110 quizzes takes a decent amount of time. Maybe 3 hours or more? Ugh. Google should pay me to take this damn thing. Anyways at the end of quiz number 95 or so.. it’s getting late. And late being like 8 hours later. Having taken a variety of short breaks to go to the store and run errands and cook dinner and keep my sanity in place, this was getting ridiculous. Google, don’t you know I have a life to live? Quiz #96 gets rung in with a shot of Jameson and a toast to my girl.

Suffice to say that by Quiz #110, regardless of my lackluster performance in a variety of billing and European tax questions, I was in no mood or shape to start studying. After all, I didn’t even know if I could take this exam under my own name or if I was going to have to use the login the last guy from my company used and give him credit, where it was so obviously due to me.

Translation: Maybe I shoulda thought of a Plan C.

Tune in later this week for Plan C and beyond….

then it all started to go wrong. i got this odd feeling that you
wanted to take over my computer. and then every other computer. just
to find out everything you could about us all so you’ll know what AD
to serve up to us when we turned on a TV, flipped through a magazine
or drove past a billboard in 5 years when you take over the world. and
who knows what other evil “minority report” type schemes you have
going at the googleplex. and don’t even get me started on how you take
advantage of the people who give you money… don’t you have ALL the
smarties working for you? can’t one of them find a better way?

but now, this is the final straw. now you have my love chained to a
desk on a saturday to take a test that should consist of one simple
question: 1) you or your company send buttloads of money google’s way?
yeah? cool… you’re in. but no, nothing can be simple at google and
it sounds to me like this process is just another thing you’ve
concocted for the sole purpose of fucking with web marketing freaks. well, my
man is not one of those, he just happens to find
himself in this position.. but that is a story for another
letter. so why don’t you knock say, about 108 steps off of this
madness so he could be done with it. and so he could see me so
that i can kiss him and hug him and show him the tree where i use to
collect buckeyes when i was a wee little girl.

and then maybe i will think about installing google desktop 8.0 so
that you can spy on me & serve up a Ginger Chai scented
bodywash ad when i log in to my gworld account.

sincerely,
anonymous

[smomashup note] This letter was given to me as I locked myself in my room for four zillion hours to study and complete the google adwords qualified individual exam. It has been edited slightly to protect both the guilty and the innocent. [/end note]